Starship to Demeter (Starship Portals Book 1)

by K. D. Lovgren

  “Rai,” Sasha said. “Where is the rest of the holo?”

  “It’s missing, Captain Sarno.”

  “What happened to it?”

  “It appears to be another power surge. I will examine the data further.”

  “It’s the second time it’s happened when someone got hurt.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  “Get back to me when the analysis is complete. It’s important.”

  “Yes, Captain.”

  Sasha contained the anger she felt. She needed Noor for this. Turning on her heel, she walked to the mess like an automaton, her eyes fixed.

  She found Inger and Kal waiting for her.

  “Kal, you were an investigator before you applied to Aldortok,” Sasha said.

  “Yes.”

  “What did you investigate?”

  “Suspicious deaths.”

  “Much experience?”

  Kal shifted, looking back and forth between Sasha and Inger. “I completed four cases.” She cleared her throat. “Not many, but enough to know what I was doing. The opportunity came along to move into space training, so I took it.”

  “Could you command an investigation here?”

  “Here? What do you mean?”

  Sasha’s voice was emotionless. Am I in shock? “Yarick Cole is dead.”

  “No.”

  “Yeah. You’re the only one I know of on board with that kind of training.”

  “It’s a suspicious death?”

  “We’re going to treat it that way.”

  Kal took in a breath and looked at the floor. She looked back up. “What does the holo say?”

  “Missing,” Sasha said.

  They looked at each other for a long moment.

  “You can work with Inger,” Sasha said. “Who else would you need?”

  Kal didn’t say anything for a moment. “Can I speak to you alone?” she said to Sasha.

  “I’ll check on Noor,” Inger said. “I’ll be back.”

  “What?” Sasha said, when they’d watched Inger take off at a jog.

  “You want me to treat this as a possible murder?”

  “Yes.”

  Kal glanced in the mess and turned her back on it. “Do you know what that means?”

  “Of course. What do you mean?”

  “It means interviewing everyone. Alibis, opportunity, motive, all that. A look into everyone’s relation to Yarick, past and present. We still have weeks to go. That’s quite a long while for everyone to be suspicious of each other, afraid there’s a killer on board.”

  Sasha said, “What’s the alternative, Kal? Not investigate a possible murder because we’re all here together and can’t escape? It’s what has to be done.” She unbent a little and lowered her voice even further. “If it is…if someone did this, do you think anyone else is in danger? Yarick had a certain way with people.” Sasha spoke only of human actors, but both of them knew what she couldn’t say.

  “You’re making a lot of assumptions. We don’t know if Noor…if there’s a murderer on board, having committed one gives him or her a potential motive for another, if only to protect herself from discovery. It could be dangerous.”

  Sasha said, “Let’s meet with Inger in the Tube to get into all this, where it’s quiet. What do we need to do right now?”

  “Ask Rai to keep an eye on everyone.” Kal said it without a quiver.

  Sasha glanced up, where they all looked when they thought about Rai. “Rai, please keep track of passengers and crew. No one is allowed out of the mess for now.”

  Her smooth voice came to them. “Yes, Captain.”

  Sasha turned on her heel and walked back into the mess, straight to the large round table. “Gather round, please.”

  The few who were still getting food and drink wandered over to the table and seated themselves.

  “There’s been an incident. I’ll be back shortly to fill you all in. For now, I’d like everyone to remain in the mess. No exceptions.”

  The group was silent until Davena spoke. “We’re not to know why we can’t leave this room?”

  “You will soon.” Sasha exited, Kal trailing after her.

  They went by the infirmary to pick up Inger and went on to the Tube. Kal looked around as if she’d never been there before. With the lights on full, it looked like a different place.

  “Have a seat.” Sasha said. They seated themselves around the meeting table in the outer room.

  “Kal, you have concerns?”

  “We’re private?” She meant from Rai, of course.

  “Yes.”

  “How are we going to treat her in this? Is she…is she a suspect?”

  Sasha didn’t respond at first. She still couldn’t get over how this was the conversation they had to have now.

  “Who?” Inger said.

  “Rai,” Kal said.

  Their expressions told Inger it wasn’t a joke.

  Inger gaped. “What are you talking about?”

  “We had a strong indication Rai could have been involved in Noor’s accident,” Kal said. “She did not respond to Noor’s distress call when she knew she was running low on O2.”

  “Oh, my God.”

  “Rai is God, on the ship,” Kal muttered.

  “What about Yarick?”

  “Yarick might have helped us figure out what’s going on with Rai,” Kal said.

  “Surely Noor would be more up-to-date,” Inger said. “Noor is the authority.”

  “Noor’s unconscious.” Sasha felt like she was toting up a score. Rai two, humans zero. If that was how it really was.

  “But her system architecture is what he would know better than anyone. We think,” Kal said.

  “How could Rai kill someone?” said Inger. “She doesn’t have a body.” She whispered it, as if Rai could hear.

  “Easy,” Kal said. “We all need air.”

  “Noor had a malfunctioning helmet,” Inger said. “Rai couldn’t do that, could she?”

  “We don’t see how she could have. But she didn’t respond to Noor’s calls for help. She left her locked in the airlock.”

  Inger shook her head. “If it’s true, why? What would Rai have against Noor?”

  Sasha answered her. “She’s probably the most technically-savvy about Rai’s deep processes, of everyone except maybe Yarick. Like you said.”

  They sat in silence thinking about that for a while.

  Kal said, “Of course it might not be Rai’s decision. Someone might have used her to sabotage Noor.”

  “Not Yarick,” Inger said. “He saved her.”

  “He was in the right place at the right time,” Kal said. “Noor would be suspicious of that.”

  Inger made an impatient motion with her hand. “I have to check on my patient and set things up for Yarick. I can’t stomach this Rai theory. It’s fantastical. Yarick would be more likely to be bumped off by someone than this sort of malfunction, and even that’s not very likely. I’m sure it’s natural causes.”

  “Get some proof,” Sasha said.

  Inger left. Kal and Sasha were alone in the Tube again.

  “You have to choose a team,” Sasha said. “Who can we trust?”

  “I’ll have to interview some people.”

  “Who can we rule out?”

  Kal repeated herself. “I have to interview.”

  “Are you ruling me out?”

  Kal gave her a look. “I’ll have to interview you, too.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “I know. I will answer your questions.”

  “You better. If you lie, I’ll know.” Kal had a faint smile, but Sasha didn’t reciprocate.

  “Are you going to interview Rai?” Sasha asked. “Ask her about the missing holo? Two missing holos, now. She said it looked like a power surge, but she’d look at it further.”

  “Could a power surge in itself have hurt them? If they were in some vulnerable position, like Noor in the airlock?”

/>   “And Yarick leaning against a tree? I don’t know. I can ask Gunn. Inger.”

  Kal took this in. “Strange. Rai is a special case. She doesn’t have a conscience, so it’s a little different.”

  “She has a conscience. It’s called her directive,” Sasha said.

  “That’s not the same thing, Sasha.” Kal bit her lip.

  Sasha was quiet for a moment. “She can’t go against it, just like a person who has a moral code, except more so. A person can make a judgment call, or be swept away by the heat of passion. A machine can’t.”

  “She’s becoming more and more complex all the time. More and more human. Why isn’t it possible she could make a judgment call, too?”

  Sasha leaned back in her chair, stretching her back, arms over her head. “If that were the case, it changes everything we know. Everything we trust.”

  “I know.”

  “Ogechi has played N-Go with her. You might want to talk to her. And Noor. When she wakes.” Sasha cleared her throat. “Talking to Rai, I don’t know. You need to have a plan. A carefully thought-out plan.”

  “Why have you had Gwendy go over the trajectory calculations so much?”

  “Because Rai suggested it.”

  “Suggested Gwendy look at them?”

  “No. She suggested the trajectory adjustment. After we entered dark phase. I chose to adjust course. We still have time before we’re in the second loop. I want to make sure.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She wouldn’t commit suicide. Crash the ship,” Kal said.

  “Would it be suicide, though?” Now they were both whispering, like Inger. “Is she on the mainframe somewhere else? Is her consciousness, if she has one, split? There are a lot of questions. If Yarick hadn’t been such a twenty-four carat asshole maybe I would have asked him some.”

  “Tricked him down to the Tube?” It seemed to be out of Kal’s mouth before she could rein it back in. Kal looked like she’d swallowed an oxygen cube.

  “Yeah. That would happen.” Sasha smirked.

  Kal looked away. This was too close to the night before.

  Kal cleared her throat. “What else do we have to talk about before we leave?”

  “Figure out who you can trust. Get some help as soon as possible. Then we can figure out how to handle Rai.”

  “You could be my assistant,” Kal said.

  “I haven’t been cleared yet,” Sasha said, with a small smile.

  Sif sat atop one of the high counters in the mess, with a bird’s eye view of all the others. Tafari sat slumped, wishing he could be in the library, with his pencils and watercolors, instead of a group of anxious people trying to hide it.

  Kal and Sasha appeared from nowhere, pop-up figures who were there to break the tension with even more tension.

  Captain Sarno had all their attention without asking for it.

  “Something has happened. Yarick Cole is dead.”

  Wei gasped and put her hand to her mouth. It was the only sound for several breaths. Everyone was still, as if playing a child’s game of statues.

  Sasha continued. “We’re treating the death as unexplained. Pilot Black Bear will be conducting an investigation. It’s a job she held in the past, so we’re bringing her out of retirement. For this reason, she’s best suited to clear up our current…” Sasha paused, looking for a word, “dilemma. If you could all give her your time and information, we’ll get the situation resolved sooner rather than later.” She looked over the group. “Any questions?”

  “How did he die?” Davena’s voice was strong, her posture unapologetic. The lines and curves of her chin moko made all her assertions powerful, as it emphasized her facial expressions and connected her to her ancestors, her power.

  “It’s best we don’t discuss these things, until Kal has had a chance to question us.”

  Davena looked at Sasha with astonishment. “Are you saying you think there’s a murderer among us?”

  “Not saying any such thing.” Sasha looked unmoved. “We have to proceed with logic. As you all know.”

  “I can’t believe it.” This Davena said almost to herself. “I read these things to amuse myself. Agatha Christie. How can I be in one of the books on my own shelf?”

  “Please wait here until Kal calls you. She’ll interview you each in the library or the Tube, depending on where she decides to set up.” Sasha stepped back, holding her arm out. “Kal?”

  “Thank you, Captain. I’d like to speak to Sif first, please.”

  Everyone’s head swiveled toward Sif. The perpetually self-contained Icelander looked self-conscious for once. Without looking anyone in the eye, she stood up and marched over to Kal, who lead the way out of the room. Sasha took a seat herself, without comment.

  Davena said, “Will you be interviewed, Sasha?”

  Sasha studied an image she had pulled in front of her. Without looking up, she said, “Yes, Davena. Of course.”

  Davena raised her eyebrows and nodded. She shot a look at Chyron, who lifted her eyebrows in return.

  Kal was nervous. Sif was a cool customer who made a lot of people nervous, or in awe, possibly due to her otherworldly appearance and quixotic personality. Would Sif still look otherworldly on another world? Kal thought, momentarily distracted. Sif never said the expected thing, unless she was flirting with someone, which was fairly often. Kal had felt no natural affinity for Sif and hadn’t cultivated a friendship.

  Kal remembered Sif’s remark about their names both having three letters. After Kal’s correction, Sif hadn’t given her the time of day since.

  Looking down at her notes image, some things she’d thrown together earlier in the Tube, Kal tried to organize her thoughts. She was rusty.

  “You found Yarick,” she said.

  “Yes.” Sif had her head tilted, looking at Kal with her rather spooky pale eyes, unnerving her.

  “Please take me through everything you did this morning, up to the finding of his body.”

  “Oh.” Sif pushed her lower lip out, thinking. “I woke up, wrote in my log, as I usually do.”

  “You keep a daily log?”

  Sif looked wary of this question. “Yes. I presume we all do.”

  “Is it a record of what you do?”

  Sif wavered her head back and forth. “What I do and what I think.”

  “And after that?”

  “Got up. Got dressed. I went to the library to return a book. Then I made myself a cup of tea and took the lift to the astrolab.” Sif emphasized the mundanity of her recital with the deliberate rhythm of her words.

  “Is that something you normally do?”

  “No. I wanted to today.”

  “What did you do up there?”

  “I looked at the stars. I thought about our destination. Made some notes.”

  Kal nodded for her to go on.

  “So. I came down and returned my cup.”

  “Who was in the mess?”

  Sif rolled her eyes back, thinking. “Gwendy and Chyron. Gunn. Tafari. Ogechi. I didn’t see anyone else. There might have been, in the swing chairs, but I didn’t see.” When Kal didn’t speak she went on. “I grabbed a little bread with some cheese and took it with me. Walked my usual routine, ate the bread. Then I went to the gym. Got on the physio for a workout.”

  “You eat before getting on the physio?”

  “Sometimes. It doesn’t bother me.”

  “I thought the physio was broken,” Kal said.

  “Gunn fixed it.”

  “How long were you on it?”

  Sif shrugged. “Twenty minutes. I got off and wiped down a little bit. Decided to walk in the park for a cool down.”

  “What time was this?”

  “About 9:20, I would say.”

  “You know, or you think?”

  “I don’t know for sure. I have a good sense of time.”

  “Even on a ship?” Kal said, doubtful.

  Sif smiled. Not a very nice smile, Kal tho
ught. She was struggling not to judge Sif’s demeanor, which was not getting any easier to take with further exposure.

  “A clock is internal. It doesn’t depend on space,” Sif said.

  Kal looked at her, direct into those strange eyes. “That’s not true.”

  “Oh? You think so?”

  “Our internal clocks are based on Earth cues.”

  “Here, we have ship cues. Same thing.”

  Kal shook her head but didn’t pursue it. “Was anyone else in the park?”

  “Yes.” Sif stopped, as if this conversation had become pointless.

  “Who?” Kal said, wishing she had someone else there who could witness Kal’s patience.

  “Yarick.”

  “Was he dead?”

  “No. He was reading a book. I said hello. He nodded and acted like he was going to get up but I waved him down.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said, ‘Pretty day for a stroll.’ I ignored that because it was an inane comment. We’re in a temperature-controlled environment.”

  “Did you know him very well?”

  “It’s hard not to get to know someone here, I’m sure you’ll agree.”

  No, because I don’t know you at all, Kal thought.

  “I knew of him, of course, as we all do. I knew he was on the board of Aldortok and had been influential with Worldgov. He had some peculiar ideas.”

  “Did you know about his work with the early AI applications?”

  Sif blinked. “I suppose.”

  “Did you speak any further?”

  “I looped around in the park, as I like to do. It was bothersome to have him there. I usually have it to myself at that time of day. When I came back by him, he closed his book. He said it was funny how Gunn and I were from the same place, yet we were so different. He said the oldest government in the world had spawned descendants who would be part of forming the newest government, in a new world.”

  Similar to what he’d said to Kal. “Is that true?”

  “It is true the Althing is the oldest parliament. It has a thousand-year history.”

  “And will you be part of a new government?” Kal had not heard this.